Only Three Months Left

A New Plaything

I know I've said this many, many, times before, but time really, really, does fly!  It's now only three more months left before I head to South Korea to begin my new life, and new job. In the mean time, I'm doing my best to get ready.

During the spring session, my Korean class was cancelled for the second time due to insufficient enrollment. So, I'm currently learning Korean from a private tutor. It's coming along quite well as I'm learning quite a bit. And, amazingly, I seem to be retaining most of what I am learning. I'm also finding a bit of similarity between Korean and Chinese. Some of the words are the either the same, or quite close. This really helps as I speak two Chinese languages fluently. The real acid test, though, will be when I am there all alone. Then, I'll see how well/poorly I do. Never fear, at least I can now order food and won't starve! LOL 

Concurrent with the Korean lessons, I'm currently in the middle of getting all my paperwork done and ready for the work visa. Most of it is now together with a few bits left to go. There's even an in-town orientation day for all of us who were/are hired for this September. That's in less than two weeks time. I'm looking forward to it as it's a chance to meet some fellow teachers. It's also a chance to make some new friends so that the time over there will not be such a shock to the system. This should be fun!

I am also gaining some limited real-life teaching experience by shadowing my former English grammar teacher while she teaches her ESL class during regular daytime school. I had taken a refresher course from her last fall and she has graciously offered to allow me to watch and learn from her teaching methods. I must say this is very helpful for a person without any formal teaching experience in a school setting. I've attended over a month's worth of classes so far. I'm also supposed to do some practice teaching in her class, too. This should prove interesting!

I will also take this opportunity to thank Allison Justice at Canadian Connection for all the help and support during this visa process. She really keeps me up to date with the latest news and forms that need to be filled out for everything. Canadian Connection is the agency who hired me for my new job. I had actually read about them in other teacher blogs before I even applied to them. All blog entries were positive and I can see why as they do keep you in the loop throughout the entire process. Highly recommended. Plus, they are in town, if you happen to live in Toronto anyways.

Well, that's the news for now. I will spend the next few months making as many 3d images as I can because once I am on my way, time will become very short and limited. I wish I could continue a life of leisure, but that does not pay the bills! LOL Oh, yeah. One last thing. The web hosting service for my two personal websites is shutting down later this year. A casualty of the financial meltdown of Q4, 2008. As such, I have decided to take them both off-line early myself. There are a few problems doing that as I can't seem to access everything I need to access in order to do that. So, parts of them are still up and parts of them are gone. Another result of what they are trying to do no doubt. In any case, you will find me on this blog and at the DA link in my main profile. My 3d art will go there and my photography will be here. And, that's all the news fit to print.